


à poil (blame it on the snake booze)

by FLWhite



Series: Braxel [2]
Category: SKAM (France), SKAM (TV) RPF
Genre: (Braxel), Aggro! Maxence, Cum Play, Dom/sub, Drunk Sex, Hair-pulling, M/M, Maxence POV, Name-Calling, Oral Sex, Porn with Feelings, RPF, Semipublic Sex, Sexting, Sexual Tension, Social Media, Spanking, Strip Poker, Text Messages, UST: ultimate sexual tension, You've been warned, brat! Axel, elu adjacent, fine a lot of feelings, handjobs, look that up if you're not sure what it is, some feelings, utter chaos gays
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-11
Updated: 2019-05-19
Packaged: 2020-03-01 00:45:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18789574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FLWhite/pseuds/FLWhite
Summary: Unrepentant Maxel porn with feelings. And a generous dose of kink.One part of Maxence wants to immediately counterattack; the more reasonable part urges patience.Patience, a resource scarce in that asinine little body.Attrition, a war that Maxence will inevitably win.





	1. à poil

**Author's Note:**

> Actually, don't blame it on the snake booze. Blame it 100% on @ryuujitsu (again).
> 
>  
> 
> **This is a work of fiction for AO3 users only.**
> 
>  
> 
> Do check out our co-authored Maxel series if you enjoyed this, as well as our other SKAMFr works!

“Just come over for _one_ drink, c’mon. Fifteen minutes.”

Axel, pinching the bridge of his nose, lifts both eyebrows with theatrical mistrust up at Maxence. “You said that last time and then we watched goddamn whale documentaries on your laptop for three hours. I’m still fucking haunted by their siren songs.”

“We won’t smoke this time. Just one drink. You gotta try this crazy stuff somebody just sent me from Hong Kong. It’s got a snake in it.” At Axel’s moue of disgust, he adds, “Don’t worry, it’s a _dead_ snake.”

“Great, _wow_ , yes, what I’ve always _dreamed_ of at one a.m. before a trans-Atlantic flight and after partying for four hours, dead snake booze. I gotta get to bed. Dude, as it is I’ll barely have six hours before I have to go to the airport.”

He rolls his eyes twice to make sure Axel can see him in the flickering orangey light of the streetlamp that illuminates them from above. “Please, you’re not getting to sleep anytime soon, you’re talking at two hundred kilometers an hour. Have a drink and chill for like a tiny bit and then I will _personally_ escort you downstairs to your beauty rest.”

“I—”

“Come on. Fifteen minutes. Then you get to deprive me of your company for a whole seven days.” And now, he prepares his killer move: he bounces a little from foot to foot and tilts his head and crinkles his eyes and lowers their lids and parts his lips a fraction, a fraction, barely enough to show the edges of his teeth. Axel’s pupils contract for a moment, then expand, swallowing the blue around them.

“Fine. Fine!”

He chuckles and claps and, with one palm lightly against Axel’s shoulder blade, they are off.

*

“Okay no, fuck you,” Axel slurs, slapping down his handful of cards. “This is definitely a flush, and that, that’s—” he squints at his phone, then back at Maxence’s hand. “Thassa two pair!”

“You have a spade in there with your clubs,” Maxence replies. “The seven. Mine’s bigger.”

“Fucker.” Axel extracts the offending card, bringing it to within three centimeters of his face and scowling deeply. “Fine.” He flings himself backward against the wall, with a rustle of protest from the black beanbag chair on which he has been sprawling. “Cantcha open that window any wider or somethin’?”

“No,” Maxence begins, then coughs indelicately; Axel is throwing his arms overhead and struggling to pull off his hoodie.

“How d’you even get any sleep at night? Hot as the fuckin’ mouth of Hell in here.” Axel’s own mouth is the first part of him to make it through the muffling inversion of his sweatshirt; it is grinning widely. “You prolly go ’round naked all the time, dontcha. Admirin’ yourself.”

Before Maxence can reply, Axel adds, “You gonna just sit there or are you gonna gimme a hand?” Maxence chews his upper lip with his lower incisors. A considerable swathe of Axel’s belly and ribs are on display as his T-shirt rides up, a victim of their owner’s struggle with the recalcitrant hoodie; his skin is faintly glazed with sweat. “Fuckit. ’M stuck.”

Rising to a half-kneel from his low stool, Maxence grasps the sweatshirt’s hood, the part most safely distant from Axel’s flailing hands, the temptation of Axel’s cutely crinkled navel, and the far more horrible, luscious, _positively aching_ temptation of the slight sweaty curve between his final rib and the top of his hip. He shuts his eyes too late to avoid the sight of the waistband of Axel’s briefs making a teasing cameo.

As he tugs and heaves, he curses his own cowardice. How many times, in these last ten months, has he come this close? _Brought_ him this close? _This close_?

And then backed away, laughing too loudly? Pretending he didn’t see the Adam’s apple jumping in Axel’s throat? Suddenly becoming fascinated by a breaching humpback, the weave of a rumpled rug, the tiny crack in the plaster over a window? Trying to scrub the images, burned in negative on his retinas, of Axel’s up-curling mouth, the enormity of his eyes, his fingers flexed around a plastic cup, all of it surely too deliberate to be an accident, a misunderstanding, a mistake?

He releases a shaky breath when the sweatshirt finally pulls free and Axel sits heavily back down on the beanbag chair, giggling and tugging at the hem of his T-shirt. His hair stands on end in all directions, glinting chestnut under the pot lights; the mole on his clavicle winks at Maxence like a lascivious eye.

Maxence squeezes his knees together. He studies the baseboard. He inhales and exhales in counts of three through his nose. He thinks of deserts. The two shots of snake liquor, writhing on top of the vodka soda and beers from the party, are not helping matters. He imagines Axel in desert whites, deep-tanned, eyes a miragelike blue. He imagines the scritching of sand between their lips, their teeth.

“Oh, oh ho ho,” Axel is guffawing. “I gotta sick _idea_. First of all, getcha phone ready, this’ll make the fans go _bonkers_. Secon’ of all, solves your mouth of Hell problem.” He bounces up to squat on his heels, his grin now of maniacal proportions. “ _Strip poker_.”

“What?”

“What, too chicken? I lost that hand but Imma kick your skinny ass.”

“But—your flight?”

The majesty of Axel’s eyeroll is on par with a whale arcing in slow-motion from the sea. “Might as well jus’ sleep on the damn plane at this point.”

*

“It’s, uh, it’s fine, you can keep those on,” Maxence worries the inside of his cheek with his canines. “I think you’ve made your point.”

Axel bares his teeth from behind his knees, which are pulled to his chest. The blond hairs on his goosebumped thighs undulate in the breeze from the wide-open window. His T-shirt, both socks, and his jeans are heaped around him like offerings. Maxence has lost only his socks and his own hoodie, which he, with wise foresight, had thrown over his lap.

“Rules’re rules,” Axel says, beginning to unfold himself. Both of his thumbs are already sliding under the waistband of the briefs.

Maxence’s parkouring heart, which has been doing flips against his ribs, seems to have exhausted itself at last; it drops to somewhere around his diaphragm with a leaden throb. “No, you—keep those on. You, you can just concede.”

“Concede!” Axel rolls unsteadily onto his feet. “What kinda strip poker is that?” His face, flushed, hovers close above Maxence’s, then closer. The whites of his eyes are almost glowing. “Are you makin’ funna me?”

“No,” he breathes.

He will never be sure if it was he who moved first, or Axel. If it were his hands that first clasped Axel’s nape and jaw, or Axel’s that first knotted in the soft folds of his T-shirt, pulling hard. If his eyes slipped shut first, or Axel’s, their lashes quivering against each other’s cheeks, their noses crushed together.

When he tastes Axel, at last, at last, he groans like he’s been stabbed.

More accurately, he’s being eaten: Axel’s teeth close around his lower lip, leaving a line of indentations. They scrape his tongue so hard that he winces. The snake liquor lingers, spiky and searing, in the corners of Axel’s mouth, in the hollow of his cheek, and, hardly breathing, Maxence throws himself upon these spots.

He rises and closes his hands around the tops of Axel’s shoulders, crosses his wrists behind Axel’s back, tucks Axel’s thighs between his knees, presses Axel close and then closer still, until Axel grunts, struggling, and peels his red face free of Maxence’s, panting in pursuit of his long-lost breath.

The stool on which Maxence had been sitting has been somehow overturned in their tussling. For several moments, the only sounds Maxence can hear above the din of his heart is a cushion’s feeble rustle as it makes contact with the beanbag chair, and also the ticking of the wall clock from the kitchen.

“Fuck,” says Axel. “Oh fuck.” He rubs hard with his knuckles against the spit-shiny corner of his bitten mouth. “Am I bleedin’?”

The beat of Maxence’s blood accelerates impossibly. Then there is a roar in slow motion, as of a dam giving way, and he lifts his left hand and he wraps his fingers around Axel’s wrist and he yanks, bringing it down hard against Axel’s hip. Axel jolts and his mouth opens indignantly, but he is silenced by Maxence’s tongue.

When next he is allowed to surface, Axel has been wedged into the nearest corner, his most wayward strand of hair just brushing the bottom of a planter of aloe suspended by macramé swaying above him. His twitching has pushed a couple of postcards awry where they are pinned to the wall, and his hands are frantic in Maxence’s hair as Maxence begins to traverse the wide warm estate of skin between his chin and navel, blazing a sloppy trail of kisses on the descent. “Max—fu—Maxe!”

Maxence shoves his folded hoodie under his bent knee, lets his weight rest on it experimentally. The parquet creaks, but his kneecap is both warm and comfortable. “Yes?”

“Maxe, are you—what—” Maxence pushes his face forward, directly against the disarrayed front of Axel’s briefs. Axel’s head jerks backward, rapping against the plaster. His fingers push ten hard points into Maxence’s scalp. “Goddammit, Maxe!”

Through his lashes, Maxence sees Axel’s upturned chin tremble. Through the relentless restless thrumming of his pulse, he hears what might be a sob.

A icy drop of bitterness slithers down the back of his neck and curls directly around his heart. _You ass_ , he thinks; _you snake_ . _You cruel little madman._ He huffs, his lips resting against the taut cotton, against Axel, and then, every cell in him shouting with reluctance, he rocks himself back onto his haunches and loosens his bruising grip around Axel’s thighs. The tremor in Axel’s jaw has migrated, spread; his entire body quivers.

For what feels to Maxence like an infinite span, they say nothing. The tiny susurrations of Axel’s hair against the wall, the faint creaking of the macramé as the planter slowly rotates, and their shaky breaths, are magnified and grow louder until Maxence, sighing, allows himself to sit back onto the floor and to slump over his outstretched legs, putting his hands over his ears.

“Maxe?” His hand rises almost automatically to swat away Axel’s as it falls, awkward but gentle, on his crown. “Maxence, I—hey?”

“You’re fucking wasted, Axel,” he says, fast and low. “You should put your clothes back on and go home.”

“What?” Axel bends, slides, and drops to his knees, one on either side of Maxence’s bare feet. His palms rest gingerly atop Maxence’s thighs, warm damp skin meeting skin through the wide rips in Maxence’s jeans. “What’re you sayin’? You want me to go?” He’s no longer slurring as badly as he had been; as he speaks, his voice catches a little spark of jauntiness. “You sure ’bout that?”

Maxence meets Axel’s half-smile with his eyebrows set at their grimmest. “You are _drunk_.” He presses a balled-up sock into Axel’s hand. “Put your clothes on.” His craven gaze flees Axel’s  and makes for the baseboard again, so he is startled when Axel’s arms suddenly close around him and the rest of Axel, tipping forward, lands onto and around him.

“So’re you, you’re fuckin’ sloshed too,” Axel mumbles, warm, slow, into Maxence’s flank. “Now take all this off already.”

His hands shiver a centimeter above Axel’s bare arms. He has to hear Axel say it—what, he doesn’t know, but something, something more. “You sure?”

“Yeah, ’m sure.” Axel shifts to stare with one wide blue eye up at him. “’M sure.” Then Axel plunges his hand down the neck of Maxence’s T-shirt and sniggers at the jump he causes.“Now c’mon, get naked. We can blame it on your snake booze.”

He replies by again seizing Axel’s wrist. This time he doesn’t let go for a long time.


	2. You have thirteen unread messages

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He darts off to the alley “for a smoke” just before the cheese course arrives.  
> You have thirteen unread messages, his phone informs him.  
> His hand trembles shamefully around his lighter.

The first picture comes just as his eyes open. It is of the sky over Manhattan, blotched with clouds, the sun of dawn fierce behind them. He squints. Axel has typed, in a curly font over a corner, _good morning_. He clicks into his world clock app, blinking. The photo had to have been taken yesterday morning, Axel’s first one there; it’s only two-fifteen a.m. in New York at the moment.

 _—What are you doing awake,_ he types. The blue _Read_ appears instantly.

 

— _No rest for the wicked._

— _AKA jet lag_. An airplane emoji, then an explosion emoji.

— _Ouf, maybe shouldn’t joke about planes blowing up in New York, eh._

 

 _—No. Maybe you should go the hell to sleep._ He realizes that he’s grinning only when his cheek begins to ache. He shakes himself, drags his fingers through his hair: once, twice, to pull free this idiocy.

 

— _I’m in bed. Was hoping for some virtual company._ Three little purple devils, smiling.

 

“God, why? This dumb fuck,” he groans to the ceiling as he slides to his feet. He’d been hoping that the morning wood would make its quiet exit, as it usually did, by the time he finally freed himself from his too-comfortable sheets, but alas, it now shows every sign of firm persistence. He shuffles toward the bathroom, typing one-handed.

 

— _Some of us working folk have jobs to go to._

 

— _Aw._ Then another bubble, comprising entirely of W’s.

_—What job? A shoot? Thought you said you had an audition this week._

 

He slams the percolator around the kitchen as he loads it to the gills with espresso, as though violence were an answer to any problem generally or the one now in his shorts specifically. 

— _Yes, a shoot. Audition’s Wednesday._

The words look too black and too hard even as he taps _Send_ , but he can’t decide what else to say, so he waits for the coffee to boil and for the three dots in Axel’s reply bubble to resolve themselves and chews his thumbnails.

The dots are still irresolutely blinking as he pours out his sludgey coffee, as he rummages in the fridge for the cream, his main dietary vice. Maybe Axel’s fallen asleep, he tells himself, even as a voice murmurs in his ear, as it has uncountable times since he first laid eyes on Axel’s fluffy little head, “Maybe this is it, maybe this is the end, it’s over, it’s done.” The strain is at last too much and he puts his phone on the counter, facedown, as he waters the plants. The _ping_ it makes a second later makes his hand waver and a trickle of water splash the floor.

— _Is it an underwear shoot?_ More purple devils.

He snorts and sighs at once and has to cough for a minute before he can reply.

— _Go to sleep_.

*

Vengeance, vengeance for the morning, he thinks as he tries again, this time with the ten-second delay timer on. The result is indeed much superior. Himself, backed against the cool blue tiles of the studio washroom, the dove-gray color smudged on his mouth where he’d begun to wash it off, the heavy band of smoky black across his eyes and temples still intact. The white streak they sprayed diagonally across his chest is flaking only a little.

He selects one of the burst of ten, the one in which his lip curls at its most insouciant angle and his eyes are half-shut, and sends it before he can change his mind.

It should be half-past noon in New York. Hopefully Axel is lunching with Someone Important. Hopefully he’ll have something liquid in his mouth at the moment he sneaks a look at his phone.

“Are you okay in there, Maxe?” Stefan is singsonging outside.

“Fine, uh—” He turns both taps on, full-throttle, and shouts over the din. “Just another couple minutes for me to get all this off.”

*

The notifications begin, one after another, almost immediately synchronized with him making a final swipe at his neck with the towel as he emerges, but he has to silence them: Stefan practically drags him off to dinner, then Elisabeth is in the back of the car already and decides to assail him with his scheduling for the whole next quarter during the entire ride and almost all of the meal, until he darts off to the alley “for a smoke” just as the cheese course arrives.

 _You have thirteen unread messages_ , his phone informs him. His hand trembles shamefully around his lighter.

All are audio.

Bringing the phone to his cheek, he listens to the messages in sequence. Axel’s voice echoes a little.

 

“You prick.”

“You goddamn _prick_.”

“What is this—this costume—what _is_ it even?”

“ _Fuck_.”

“You know what you look like? You look like, like—”

Axel’s voice drops a half-octave. “An actual slut.”

“God. Now I’m stuck in this fucking bathroom.”

“Thank god it’s a single-stall.”

“Imagining you like _that_. Here with me."

“Guess that was your point, huh?”

“Well, two can play at that fucking game.”

“You gonna push me down? Gonna pull my hair?”

“Gonna make me gag on you?”

 

Maxence pulls the phone away from his ear like it’s aflame; shutting his eyes, he grinds the blades of both shoulders into the old bricks behind him. The last message had been sent just as Elisabeth had put in their drink orders.

One part of Maxence wants to immediately counterattack; the more reasonable part urges patience.

Patience, a resource scarce in that asinine little body.

Attrition, a war that Maxence will inevitably win.

He takes a deep drag of his cigarette and meditates steadfastly on cold showers. After five tries, he manages to take a satisfactory slow-motion video of himself blowing a series of smoke rings; he sends it as he stubs out his cigarette.

*

He does have to clear his throat in the middle of a sentence on a live when the next notification bubble slides across his phone’s lock screen: the preview thumbnail shows Axel’s left hand, for some reason gleaming with wet, barely closing around an enormous banana.

— _À poil_ , Axel says on the live chat and on Maxence’s phone, simultaneously.

He parries by taking his stainless-steel straw between his teeth and sipping his soda water leisurely through it, making sure to smack his lips a little as he swallows. He crinkles his eyes directly into the camera.

*

An extremely thoroughly buttered ear of white corn with one bite taken out of it right among the fullest, juiciest kernels, with the hand-written legend, “I bite.”

Brian, sliding across Maxence’s chest as he laughs and pulls his T-shirt over his head, captioned “I squeeze.”

*

A blurry close-up of Axel’s upper lip, dripping with foamed milk.

Maxence’s chin as he sucks at a very ripe pear.

*

Axel’s toes among a tubful of dense bubbles.

Maxence shampooing, the top of his head vanishing into a tall pile of suds.

— _Don’t drop your phone, now._

 

_—Right back at you, you jerk._

*

On the fifth day, Axel sends nothing until it is already past two p.m. in New York.

— _I hope you’re eating a nice dinner. What’re you wearing?_

 

— _Just Brian. And my underpants._ He puts down his bowl.

 

 _—For real? Isn’t it like, only 7C out? Your place isn’t_ that _warm._

He hesitates for a long while.

 _Aw, checking the weather for me?_ No. Too syrupy. He can’t encourage any more repeats of what Axel launched at him yesterday afternoon, just as he was waiting to go into his audition: a loop of Axel eating a tzatziki-soaked falafel in one bite and sucking each finger clean afterward.

 _The cold never bothered me anyway_. No. He tries again.

 _—Shit, I didn’t know you cared about anything except your hair and your dog._ A little too much, but he’s hungry and he’s starting to run out of ideas.

Axel reads the message. A blinking bubble appears for a moment, then vanishes. Then there is nothing at all. “You’ve done it for real now,” the voice murmurs sweetly to Maxence, every syllable a knife between his ribs. “This is it at last.”

He’s already in bed when the reply comes.

— _Well, you know me too well._

_—I keep tabs so I can tell the sitter when to put Ouba in her sweater._

The relief is stunning; he buries his face in his pillow for a few seconds, a blankness roaring in his mind even as a warmth settles around his shoulders like a downy duvet. “Fuck,” he says to no one as his phone pings again. “Fuck.”

— _What, are you jealous? Careful, Ouba has pointy teeth. And she’ll fight you for me any time._

 

_—No, I’m going to sleep. Class all day tomorrow._

 

_—When’ll you be done?_

 

_—Five-thirty? Six?_

_—Why?_

 

_—Do you have evening plans?_

 

_—Why’re you asking?_

 

_—Just curious._

 

_—No, no plans. Peace and quiet, feeding my snake, playing a couple records, having a couple beers. No important auditions or interviews or agent meetings or shoots for you to ruin with your online harassment._

 

_—Sounds nice._

 

He is stymied; he truly does not know what he can say to this. So he sends a smirking emoji.

— _What, are you jealous?_

 

_—Good night, Maxe._

_—Enjoy feeding your_ snake _._

*

He is contemplating a third beer when the doorbell tinkles. Simon doesn’t usually show up unannounced, plus he’d said he was going to an opening or something when Maxence had invited him over earlier in the week. And, after one rapid-fire exchange with Axel in the morning (maple syrup being licked off some sticky knuckles, yogurt being sucked off the tines of a fork) Maxence’s phone has been silent all day. He turns it over now: nothing.

With a shrug, he pads to the ancient wall receiver and clicks the speaker button. “Hi?”

“Hi Maxe.”

Maxence has never believed that anyone really, literally jumps in surprise; he is now forced to amend his position on the matter.

Trying not to breathe too loudly and betray himself, he jabs at the speaker button again. “Axel?”

“Hi. Can you let me into the building? Looks like I forgot my fob when I was heading out.”

“Wha—what are you doing back? Wasn’t—” He bites his sentence short just in time to avoid giving away how many times he’s refreshed Axel’s flight schedule that evening: _on time_ , _arriving tomorrow_ , the little letters had said, placid and green, every time.

“Today’s interview got moved at the last minute to next month.” Axel’s voice through the speaker, crackly and small, is utterly unreadable. “Plus, I was missing Ouba.”

“Ah.”

“Look, the sitter already went home. Let me in so I can give her some supper, please.”

“All right, all right.” He presses the 9 key painfully hard and tosses the receiver back into its cradle, then, not even sure himself why he feels so suddenly irate, stamps into his bedroom and slams the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Terrifyingly, I have thrown down about 3k words of ANOTHER Maxel story just today. These kids are eating me alive.
> 
> Thanks as always for reading!


	3. No rest for the wicked

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> His voice sounds like an orange recently put through a juicer amidst the pealing synthetic chords that boom out around him. “Get the fuck in here!”  
> *  
> In which Axel is a brat-king of chaos and Maxence puts his foot (hand?) down.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Earning my Explicit rating and tags here, y'all. ;) One more (lengthy!) chapter to go. And then I will begin posting the Extreme Maxel Sadfest that No-one Asked For. Thanks as always for reading.

Ten minutes pass. He rolls out the yoga mat and stretches. He puts on a vinyl, lies back on the cushy black foam, closes his eyes: Wendy Carlos’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, suitably apocalyptic and suitably frenzied. A strange noise intrudes jarringly among the electronic bleeps and rasps, an unfamiliar one, and he sullenly half-opens one eye.

Just as he shuts the eye again, the noise returns. It is from the window.

He levers himself into a crouch and peers at the sash. Perhaps the screen is once more trying to secede, as it had done last spring.

The third piece of gravel landing against the glass, therefore, makes him jump again. “Fuck!” He peers out and down, already knowing what he will see, and indeed, there, two stories below, is Axel, feet wide-planted on the sidewalk, one triumphant fist upraised.

As Maxence looks on, Axel drops the fist—an unused arsenal of projectiles tumbles onto the concrete—and pantomimes dialing a phone, receiving no answer, and dialing again. His face grows more and more comically consternated as he repeats the gestures. An elderly couple, passing carefully by with bulging shopping trolleys, eyes Axel sidelong. Axel now motions as though he is pulling up blinds and throwing open both panes of a window. He points directly at Maxence.

Maxence stares coolly back, but he suddenly feels the need to wipe his palms on the hem of his T-shirt.

 _Come on,_ Axel mouths.

Maxence continues to stare.

Axel looks quickly to his left and right, then, his eyes fastened on Maxence’s, begins to drop to his knees. Maxence has the window flung wide before denim meets pavement.

His voice sounds like an orange recently put through a juicer amidst the pealing synthetic chords that boom out around him. “ _Get the fuck in here_!”

*

“Well, I understand you got impatient,” Axel is saying in a purr when Maxence yanks his front door open with a clatter of the still-fastened chain. “But I _did_ say I had to go feed Ouba first.”

Maxence, rising to his full height, clenches his jaw at the little lopsided smirk and says nothing.

“Aren’t you gonna let me in?” The smirk broadens, but he can see the faintest tremor of unease underneath it.

He continues to glare.

“I can get down here, too, if you want,” Axel says, and actually does kneel this time. When he looks up, he’s no longer smirking. “Maxence?”

“And who are you again?”

The face Axel makes is too perfect; he wishes he could preserve it for future enjoyment. “Maxe, I—”

Maxence twitches the chain loose and, seizing the front of Axel’s sweatshirt, hauls him stumblingly upright, across the threshold, and, in one motion, slams the door to and crushes Axel against it. There is a feeling like a sigh and a yell at once rising in his throat as their mouths meet, as he puts his knee hard between Axel’s thighs, as he winds himself around Axel roughly enough to squeeze out an _ouf._

After a few thumping heartbeats, he thrusts himself a few hand-widths backward to resume glaring. The hair atop Axel’s head is in an unbelievable state of chaos.

“What the _fuck_ is wrong with you? Is your head made of cheese? What if you broke the fucking window?”

“Well you weren’t answering your phone, or your door,” Axel says. Incredibly, he drops his eyes. He might actually be pouting a little. “And I figured it’d be worse for you to have a kicked-in front door than a little crack in your window.”

Maxence’s stare is now one of simple incredulity, but Axel droops under it all the same.

“Look, sorry, I thought—I thought it’d be fun to surprise you.” Axel darts a look up at him, then returns to scrutinizing his shoelaces. “Sorry.”

Maxence has to swallow twice before he trusts his mouth to work correctly. “Definitely, one hundred percent, surer than fucking _anything_ : your head is made of cheese.”

“Oh,” says Axel. Then he’s gasping into Maxence’s mouth; he moans once as Maxence’s tongue joins the fray, and again when he hears the clinking of Maxence’s rings as they are stripped and dropped onto the counter.

*

“Not on the glass, no, the frame.” He puts his hands over Axel’s and slaps them onto the slightly chipped dark paint of the windowsill. “A dumbass-sized hole would be probably even harder to explain to the management than a rock-sized one.”

“Ah,” replies Axel. Then, swiveling to grin back at Maxence, “I don’t think you’re jacked enough to push me through—ah!” He yelps as Maxence’s right hand, fingers spread, connects with his rump; both of his feet leave the floor momentarily. Once he lands, he swivels again, no longer grinning. “Did you actually just—?”

Maxence cracks his knuckles, one by one. “Pants off. Underwear too.”

Axel blinks for a moment, then, silently, brings both hands to the buckle of his belt without turning. He wriggles out of his jeans and the boxer briefs underneath, staggering a little in haste. His ears are bright red. He does not look at Maxence as he croaks, “Maxe, they—they can see.”

“No, they can’t.” Maxence takes one-and-a-half steps forward, draping over Axel, who does not resist as he is nudged, with a small _thunk_ , against the glass. “Only down to your belly button.” The skin of Axel’s thighs is cool and prickles with goosebumps under the heel of Maxence’s hand.

Maxence draws the hand back with a deliberate intake of breath. “But you wanted to make a spectacle of yourself anyway, didn’t you?”

Axel’s shoulders tighten and his eyes fly shut.

“Oh, you _liked_ that?” Instead of landing the blow, he puts his fingertips tenderly against the small dips at the base of Axel’s back, just next to the ghost of a tan line. He can barely suppress a chortle. “And I thought I was punishing you!”

He dances his fingers around the crest of Axel’s hip, taps them as they descend between Axel’s legs, and then the chortle dies in his throat.

He’d expected Axel to be maybe a little hard, a little turned on after all that tongue and teeth and slobbering on each other, but instead he finds the most impressive erection with which he’s ever shared such close quarters (not, of course, that this is saying very much; his sample size is not exactly substantial).

“You—you actually like it,” he can’t help saying, voice catching a little, then feels like an utter idiot. Another moment, ruined.

Axel says nothing. The window fogs under his cheek as his breath comes faster. His legs are trembling.

Fuck. Maxence gulps. Fuck. What should he do? What now? He doesn’t realize he’s spoken aloud until Axel groans, “For fuck’s sake, sorry, but—don’t leave me like this. Sorry.”

Words crowd onto his tongue, words he’s never said at anyone, yet they fall from him with ease, as though Axel exerts some strange gravity upon him. “Why shouldn’t I, if you’re going to be such a rude boy?” His feet close the distance between them once more, so that he is again jammed against Axel’s bent and naked back, their thighs flush, his exhales fluttering Axel’s hair. “Didn’t your Maman teach you manners?”

“Fuck, fuck, _fuck_ , Maxe—” The grinding of Axel’s teeth is audible. He is scarlet from his hairline to the base of his neck as he turns to look at Maxence with a grunt. “Do it again. Do it, please.”

“Do what?”

“God—hit me, hit me again. Maxe, please.”

“There’s a good boy.” He licks the point of his upper lip and cocks his hand; this time, he lets it connect.

*

“Are you sorry yet for being such a brat?” Maxence’s palm is tingling, but he surveys his handiwork with pride. Axel’s ass is becomingly pinked and gleams softly with sweat. The imprint of his own palm has only just faded from one side. “A bratty little tease? Trying to fuck up my audition? Hmm?”

“Wha—but you also sent—”

The meatiest curve of Axel’s rear looks so tempting that he bends and closes his teeth around it, making sure to clamp his fist extra-tight around Axel’s cock meanwhile. Out of Axel’s mouth, drooling against the windowpane, comes a passable impression of a dying bear. Accompanying it is a full-body spasm that mashes Maxence’s face against Axel’s hip. “Fuck!”

Maxence nips a wet line upward, tonguing the long muscles paralleling Axel’s spine. “What was that?”

“Ugh, ’m sorry, sorry I—teased you. Sorry. You gonna—gonna ever lemme—ugh.” Axel bucks as Maxence begins to jerk him again, agonizingly slowly. “Ugh, _Maxe_.”

“Still didn’t catch that.” He now dents the salt-damp skin of Axel’s shoulder with his incisors, letting the tip of his tongue trace Axel’s collarbone. “You better talk clearly, or—”

He flicks a finger hard against Axel’s skin where it should be the sorest, and is rewarded with another cry.

“Lemme come, Maxe, le—lemme—please, please—”

“Oh yes?” Stepping a little apart and to the side, so that he can clearly see, at arm’s length, his left hand resting flat on the little crease dividing Axel’s thigh from his ass and his right hand still and rigid around Axel’s cock, shiny with a generous quantity of olive oil, Maxence laughs, soft and delighted. It sounds in his own ears at once like the voice of a stranger and more like himself than he’s ever known. “You want to come like this?”

Axel sags against Maxence’s hands; his knees thud against the wall. With a slippery squeak, he turns his cheek on the window and raises his eyes to Maxence’s; they are as bright as though they have been painted onto his burning face.

“Maxe,” he whispers, lips barely moving. “Please, Maxe.”

Bending slightly for leverage, Maxence twists his hand around Axel sharply, once, twice. Then he draws back and, heedless of the sting, lets his palm smack as hard as he can will it to against Axel’s flesh. With a guttural whimper, Axel falls full-length against the window, twitching; he coats Maxence’s fingers, gluing them to himself and to the windowsill, in boiling-hot bursts.

Maxence can barely breathe. “You—you’re going to have to clean this up,” he manages when he is finally able. His underwear is decisively ruined. Axel’s hair, matted where it was flattened against the window, rustles as he nods, jaw slack, eyes nearly completely shut.

Maxence squeezes his knees savagely together. If he’s too nice to Axel now, he hardly dares imagine the future hijinks he’ll have to put up with.

He lifts his dripping hand, twists it into Axel’s hair. Under his touch, Axel whines, thickly.

“Come on, no rest for the wicked.” Leaning in, he licks Axel’s kissed-raw lips; they part, eager. “Darling.” He presses his fingers against Axel’s scalp, and Axel obediently slides down the window, leaving a long smear of sweat and spit and semen, until he is squatting at Maxence’s feet.

Without being asked and with his eyes infinitely blue under the slightest sheen of tears, Axel reaches up for the button of Maxence’s fly.


	4. I’m on a boat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _—I’m on a fucking boat, Maxe! It was supposed to be fun._   
>  _—Instead, rain, five days straight._

There are already four messages waiting for him when he emerges from the shower.

 

 _—D’you miss me yet?_ Three emojis, slyly smiling.

_—They need better entertainment options on yachts, FFS, I am going to die of a Fort Boyard rerun overdose._

_—Well, I guess they hired_ me _. That’s a start._

_—Think I should hit on some cute grandparents with country houses in Tuscany?_

 

Not for the first time in the last month—hell, if you counted the time Before Snake Booze, BSB, the last almost-a-whole-year—he shuts his eyes in prayer. O Lord, O Shiva, O Allah, O Buddha, why? What have I done, in this life or the previous ones, to deserve this?

Even as he tries to breathe evenly, further messages rattle his phone on the tiles of the countertop.

 

— _’ellooooo????_ Many pouting faces.

— _I really will hit on them!_

_—Maaaaaaaaaaaxe, say somethinggggggg, I’m so boreddddddd._

 

Ignoring him doesn’t do any good. A week ago, he’d let some messages sit unread for more than three hours while he was practicing some lines and a tight-lipped woman dressed in the bright purple livery of an errand-running app had appeared on his doorstep in a sandwich board inscribed on its front with only a single, enormous À.

He’d crammed a fifty-Euro note in the woman’s hand and urged her away, pointing first in the general direction of the recycling chute, before she could finish turning to show him the back panel.

— _Aren’t you supposed to be working?_ Of course he knows that it is past eleven in Cairo and Axel should have finished the evening show more than forty-five minutes ago. He knows that Axel’s probably rotating in circles on a wheeled chair in the Business Room, because every single online review of this damn boat said that it had awful Wi-Fi except amongst the mid-1990s beige monitors of the Business Room.

But Axel doesn’t need to know that he knows these things.

 

— _I’m on a fucking boat, Maxe! It was supposed to be_ fun.

_—Instead, rain, five days straight._

 

_—Yes, so I have been informed._

 

 _—And you’re_ ignoring _me_ . Two morose faces shedding single tears. _All of my beautiful pics._

 

In point of fact, they had actually been beautiful. No bananas, no ears of corn. One slow-motion video of a gray, wind-lashed Mediterranean, one flaming dish of Baked Alaska reflected in a wineglass, one closeup of Axel’s blue left shirtcuff, a very near match with his eyes, and one of the pair of skull-shaped links from Maxence’s collection winking dully against it.

— _I already told you, permitting is crazy for this thing, we have basically 72 hours start to finish._ He’d gone to the bathroom to look at his phone so many times that day, emerging each time chewing his lip at being totally unsure of how to reply, that Cécile had leaned over to ask, after a take just before dinner, if he needed something for his stomach.

Axel is slow to respond. Perhaps he’s finally left the Business Room.

— _You must be tired._

He refuses to hear Axel’s voice in his head, soft and probably a little hoarse from the show. He hears it anyway.

 

_—Very._

 

— _Just one more day on the shoot, no?_

 

_—Yes, but then they want to do a few promo things for social media, till the end of the week. And I have a callback Friday._

 

_—Okay._

_—Get some sleep, then._

 

He begins to type _you too_ , but that sounds as bland as what Americans call bread; then, _sweet dreams_ , but he can already envision the resultant scurrilous photos exploding his phone on set tomorrow. He sucks on his teeth. Why does he always feel so fucking flat-footed with this little paninihead?

— _The cufflinks look nice._

Fuck, fuck, fuck, that came out of nowhere. But it’s too late. The blue _Read_ flicks at the bottom right-hand corner of the bubble; Maxence’s heart yaws like it’s being whipped by seawinds.

Then nothing. He switches the notification volume to maximum and puts the phone into his hoodie pocket, pads back to the bathroom, brushes his teeth; nothing. He takes extra care in applying some moisturizer, especially around the raccoon-dark rings under his eyes. Nothing. He massages his head for a few minutes with the little copper wand Agathe got him; he dabs balm on his recently manicured cuticles, files nails that need no filing. Nothing.

His own fatigue saves him. With reluctance, he slinks toward his bed, still a carnage of linens from his hitting snooze too many times that morning. He drifts to sleep with his phone beside his cheek.

*

Morning greets him with two photos from Axel, arriving just before his alarm goes off: a rumpled pillow surrounded by a nest of sheets, over which Axel has typed _saved you a spot_ . A piece of buttered toast with strawberry-confit eyes and a chunk cut out of its center and a bite on one corner, captioned _missing_ , in English.

Well, there’s the gauntlet thrown, Maxence thinks as he stares and stares at the little tooth marks on the toast, the left confit eye a little askew from the right. Thrown so hard it’s knocked a crater in the ground and all the air straight from Maxence’s lungs.

*

Maybe the gods are on his side, after all: just before the doors of his train hiss shut, a deflated heart-shaped balloon blows across the platform. He captures a photo before it drifts away.

Axel reads the message immediately.

*

A loop: Axel’s feet, criss-crossed by tan lines from flip-flops, fidgeting on a deck chair, everything over-saturated; the wind whistles in the background. Three audio messages.

“Sun came back.”

“You’re probably taping.”

“Bet you wish you were here.”

Of all the days to have to shoot a bunch of exterior scenes. Maxence, crouched on the shut lid of the porta-potty, lets himself replay the last message once more before muting his notifications.

*

“What a thunderstorm! Do you guys hear that? Crazy!” He lifts his phone so that only his eyes are onscreen. “Wrapped just in time, whew!” He clicks _Add to My Stories_ with a practiced tap, then swipes across the screen, twice: the feet are still the last thing that Axel has sent.

He types the words in and looks at them for a minute before sending them. His pulse jumps in his throat, beats against his collar.

— _Are you afraid of the rain, too?_

*

He stops in his tracks like a cartoon character, one foot off the sidewalk, when he sees the preview thumbnail of Axel’s new story: the fluffy head is bent over the keys of a white grand piano.

A pair of teenage girls, sisters, elbowing each other as they walk a very shaggy poodle, collide with him from behind; he isn’t able to extricate himself from the inevitable rounds of half-suppressed screams and autographing and selfies and dog-petting until twenty increasingly impatient minutes later.

Then, huddled at the darkest table in the nearest café, his back to the door and his hood tugged low and his headphones stuffed back into his ears, he clicks to play the video, already sure of what he’ll hear; he pauses it, fingers quaking, after the first measure.

He lays his scalding cheek on the cool stone tabletop, heedless of the crumbs of someone's muffin scattered there.

There can’t be anything to top Riopy. Fuck. Fuck. He had to have known it would come to this. Fuck. And that goddamned callback is in two hours.

He types chains of gibberish into the text box a few times before he finally gets his thumbs to cooperate.

— _Not afraid._

*

— _How’d the audition go?_

 

_—Won’t know for another two, three days._

 

_—Cool._

_—Maybe I can take you for a celebration drink Wednesday night, then? Maybe your place after?_

_—We’re supposed to get in at lunchtime._

 

I know, he thinks. Yes. Yes, my place after. Yes. Releasing a long breath, he tightens his left arm around the throw pillow as his right hand continues to type.

 

_—Don’t jinx me._

 

_—Hah, whatever. I’m sure their casting director has working eyeballs._

 

— _That’s ableist, you know._

 

_—Don’t forget lookist. I am a PROUD lookist._

 

_—Are you now?_

 

_—100%, motherfucker._

 

 _—Good._ He flops backward, pulls the pillow halfway over his face, his whole body jittering. _Me too._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading, comme toujours! I have another ~4400 word Maxel coming your way. It's, uh, gonna be a tonal shift. But I hope you'll also take a look when I begin dropping installments (probably on Tuesday, GMT -5).


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